


Fear No More, Says the Heart

by FanchonMoreau



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 22:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8641336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanchonMoreau/pseuds/FanchonMoreau
Summary: Bernie misses her connecting flight back from Kiev, but makes a connection that is perhaps more important.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for episode four of season three of Black Mirror. San Junipero. I'd honestly highly recommend this particular episode, and you don't need to watch any other episode of Black Mirror to understand it. 
> 
> Written before The Kill List aired but I think it still works! Small tumblr fic meme fill.

Bernie almost buys Serena flowers.

She knows that she can’t come back to Holby empty handed; she’s known that from the start. She’d spent most of her days off in the shops looking for something to bring back to Serena. On her last Saturday in Kiev she stumbled a small embroidery shop: handmade scarves, tablecloths, napkins, blouses, and chemises with the most delicate lace edges Bernie had ever seen. She couldn’t pick out one specific thing Serena would like, it all felt so very _her,_ and Bernie was so overcome that she rushed out of the shop without buying anything.

Now she’s stuck in an airport in Prague. She missed her connection, only _just,_ mind _,_ but it leaves her with four hours and nothing to do but find that gift for Serena.

She could pick up a duty-free bottle of wine, as she’d planned to do if she’d made her connection. A flower stall outside the food court catches her eye, but those probably wouldn’t make the flight. And what would Serena do with flowers? 

Bernie ends up loitering in a book shop at the far end of the terminal. With the exception of the major newspapers and a few of the best sellers, all of the books are in Czech. So much for trashy airport reading. She tries to make a game of matching the book covers to their English titles. 

It’s a nice distraction until she finds a book cover she recognizes immediately. Two women in flowing shirts and wide-brimmed hats, setting up for a garden party. 

_Mrs. Dalloway._

Bernie had read the book in school when she was maybe sixteen? Seventeen? No one in her class could get through it, and she was cavalier in pretending to hate it: called it boring, girly, too many feelings and not enough action. But in truth she was enraptured. She reread it so frequently and fervently that she ended up committing portions of it to memory.

She flips through the pages, and she stops right where she thinks the bit where Sally kisses Clarissa is. It went something like, god, it had been so long since Bernie had read it properly. _Like she had been given a present and told just to keep it, not to open it._ Something like that. 

And thirty-five years later, she’s finally worked out why it had mattered so much.

Bernie puts the book back on the shelf. She’ll need a new copy eventually, as the old one in still in the house with Marcus and the kids. Best the new copy be in English, though. 

She just settles on the wine, for Serena. She gets some tissue paper and ribbon and she knows she’s got some sellotape in one of her bags. The wine says, you know, I thought of you, but not I-thought-of-you-every-night-before-I-went-to-sleep or I-spent-entire-hours-staring-at-your-texts-and-hating-myself.

No card with the wine, then. 

She’s got a few hours until take off, so she curls into one of the chairs at the gate and takes out her laptop. Scrolls through her emails: notices from both Kiev Hospital and Holby’s HR departments, notice of payment on her UK electric bill, promotional emails from Marks + Spencer and Kathmandu ( _We Miss You!_ the subject line says).

She wants to stop there, she really does, but she can’t fucking help it, she goes straight to that email from Serena. _It’s time to come back._ Almost four weeks ago, now. 

There’s another thread that she can’t quite look away from. Cameron had emailed her just a week and a half ago. No subject line, message just said: 

_do you get british tv in ukraine? great ep of black mirror, third season fourth ep. think you’d like._

Bernie had responded to that one. She’d barely heard from him since the accident and their relationship was far too fragile to survive her ignoring him. 

_Isn’t that one where a guy has to have sex with a pig?_ she’d written.

Twelve hours later, a response: _no intercourse with barnyard animals in this one, promise. each ep is self contained. it’s called san junipero, seriously check it out._

Bernie’s never been much for television dramas, but if it will give her something to talk about with Cameron when she returns, then it’s worth a go. She opens Netflix and finds it listed under new releases. 

It’s a strange nostalgia trip through the eighties, or at least that’s what it feels like for the first ten minutes or so. Bernie works out right away that it’s a lesbian story; that explains Cameron’s recommendation. 

The two women, Yorkie and Kelly, they sleep together, they talk, it’s very sweet. But about halfway in the mood shifts as Yorkie starts traveling through time. Right, because this is a futuristic show, or something. Not particularly interesting, but at least no one is going to fuck a pig. 

Yorkie finds Kelly in the early aughts, where Kelly tries to rebuff her. It’s unconvincing. And it leads to Kelly finding Yorkie on a rooftop and telling her, _I wasn’t prepared for you, for wanting something._

Bernie grips the arm of her chair so hard she feels the sting of it in her bicep. She knows. She wasn’t prepared either. 

But it’s fine, it’s going to be fine for them, they’re young and gorgeous and obviously not stupid enough to wait entire decades to act on their attraction to other women. And hell, they can travel through time, so what on Earth is there to be worried about?

Except this isn’t a time travel story at all.

Bernie curls into herself as it’s revealed that Kelly and Yorkie are both elderly, and for five hours a week, their minds are uploaded to the cloud. That’s what San Junipero is. Kelly is a widow with a cancer diagnosis, and Yorkie is quadriplegic from a car accident in her twenties. 

Which happened after Yorkie came out to her parents and was rejected.

Bernie’s rapt for the rest of the episode. They get married, really just to authorize Yorkie’s euthanasia, but Kelly gets down on her knees and asks. They fight over whether Kelly is going to stay in San Junipero after she dies. Kelly runs off the road and crashes the car.

Bernie’s expecting a dismal ending. She guesses that Kelly’s going to die before she gets the chance to stay in San Junipero, or she’s going to choose to just, well, die. 

But that’s not what happens. Kelly turns to her nurse and says _I think I’m ready._ For what? _For the rest of it._

Kelly chooses to die, and she goes to San Junipero. Yorkie is waiting. They drive into the sunset together.

And that’s it. As soon as it’s over, Bernie snaps her laptop closed. She’s crying. She’s thinking about that day with Serena, just before she left, arguing about the cryonics. How she left because she knew the end was inevitable, but how Serena was trying to tell her the end was not the point. 

The point was the _start_. 

Bernie shoves her computer into her bag and scrambles out of her seat. She doesn’t know where she’s going, but she knows she needs to move. She has more energy now than her whole stay in Kiev, and her mind is racing. Kelly took the chance, the chance the Clarissa Dalloway never got and the one that Bernie never thought she’d ever get, and now she has it, it’s here, because the time for denying that she’s in love with Serena, oh that time has long since passed. 

And she knows what she needs to do.

She’s nearly running through the terminal now, her rolling bag making a racket behind her. She’ll say she’s sorry, she’ll tell Serena she loves her, so, so, so many times over, she’ll write a speech on fucking index cards and recite it if she needs to, if it will work. She wants this so badly– the second chance, the drive into the sunset. The rest of it.

And she wants it with Serena. 

Bernie stops, wipes her eyes. She’s back outside the flower stall. No, flowers are still a terrible idea. Just the wine for now, everything else after. 

She’s not going to lose her nerve this time. She plays _Heaven is a Place on Earth, t_ he song from the credits,back in her head. _Baby, I was afraid before, but I’m not afraid anymore._

And she’s not afraid anymore.

She’s not. 

**Author's Note:**

> The quote from Mrs. Dalloway that Bernie misremembers goes as follows: 
> 
> “The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it — a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling!"
> 
> Title is also from Mrs. Dalloway.


End file.
